Android Development Day 1.5
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I was looking in the wrong place when selecting the Android SDK. After uninstalling and reinstalling the SDK I noticed the much smaller section on the left hand side where I could add a new SDK and select an Android SDK and point it at a location. I imagine this would have worked under the prior configuration as well. Gotta lay the blame on IntelliJ IDE here. 85%+ of the screen focuses on a part of the screen which isn't even remotely relevant to the task you are trying to solve.
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I'm calling this day 1.5 because when I start jobs that require me to pick up a new language, if I can think of an interesting side project I will frequently start one either before or during alongside development of the application I'm doing at work. This gets me a bit more experience along the way and helps me find some of the pitfalls before they have a chance to land in a large production software. So it isn't really day #2 yet. But I'm also not coming into this fresh with absolutely no experience here, so not a day #1 type either.
Anyway, I had wanted to do just such a thing for Veronica's application. I thought of at least one small component from her software that could be converted from printout on a piece of paper into an interactive application. I hadn't started anything in another language, so it made sense to try doing an Android application. After day #1 and my realization that Xamarin wouldn't buy me out of needing to know the Android SDK I didn't bother with it for this application. It wasn't going to be cross platform anyway, and I'm comfortable writing Java.
First thought of the day. I still hate this damn thing. The Windows installer for the Android SDK defaults to the option to install "only for me". This seems to break or at least drastically complicate IntelliJ Idea Community Editions ability to locate and properly work with the damn thing. Note that this IDE in addition to Eclipse is mentioned explicitly from various pages on the Android SDK website. Fail. It might have been easier to get setup in Eclipse and I liked Eclipse in the past but I feel it has become the bloatware solution of the open source world. I also found in the past that it crashed far too often, especially with anything outside of the standard Java coding. So I opted for the JetBrains tool instead. I use their fantastic ReSharper tool at work, and the footprint was a bit smaller and in general it seems a little quicker to get up and running. Maybe I shot myself in the foot there.
At this point I've just finished un-installing and started re-installing the Android SDK "for everyone" this time so it deploys into the Program Files directory instead of my user directory. It doesn't help my disposition that this process is slow as sin.
By the end of the day I may have also ended up trying this on Eclipse. If iOS development is easier than this (and I'll wager it is, as it is all supplied by one company, similar to how Microsoft is able to supply the Windows Phone SDK) then I have no clue how Android survived this long.
I was looking in the wrong place when selecting the Android SDK. After uninstalling and reinstalling the SDK I noticed the much smaller section on the left hand side where I could add a new SDK and select an Android SDK and point it at a location. I imagine this would have worked under the prior configuration as well. Gotta lay the blame on IntelliJ IDE here. 85%+ of the screen focuses on a part of the screen which isn't even remotely relevant to the task you are trying to solve.
[/Edit]
I'm calling this day 1.5 because when I start jobs that require me to pick up a new language, if I can think of an interesting side project I will frequently start one either before or during alongside development of the application I'm doing at work. This gets me a bit more experience along the way and helps me find some of the pitfalls before they have a chance to land in a large production software. So it isn't really day #2 yet. But I'm also not coming into this fresh with absolutely no experience here, so not a day #1 type either.
Anyway, I had wanted to do just such a thing for Veronica's application. I thought of at least one small component from her software that could be converted from printout on a piece of paper into an interactive application. I hadn't started anything in another language, so it made sense to try doing an Android application. After day #1 and my realization that Xamarin wouldn't buy me out of needing to know the Android SDK I didn't bother with it for this application. It wasn't going to be cross platform anyway, and I'm comfortable writing Java.
First thought of the day. I still hate this damn thing. The Windows installer for the Android SDK defaults to the option to install "only for me". This seems to break or at least drastically complicate IntelliJ Idea Community Editions ability to locate and properly work with the damn thing. Note that this IDE in addition to Eclipse is mentioned explicitly from various pages on the Android SDK website. Fail. It might have been easier to get setup in Eclipse and I liked Eclipse in the past but I feel it has become the bloatware solution of the open source world. I also found in the past that it crashed far too often, especially with anything outside of the standard Java coding. So I opted for the JetBrains tool instead. I use their fantastic ReSharper tool at work, and the footprint was a bit smaller and in general it seems a little quicker to get up and running. Maybe I shot myself in the foot there.
At this point I've just finished un-installing and started re-installing the Android SDK "for everyone" this time so it deploys into the Program Files directory instead of my user directory. It doesn't help my disposition that this process is slow as sin.
By the end of the day I may have also ended up trying this on Eclipse. If iOS development is easier than this (and I'll wager it is, as it is all supplied by one company, similar to how Microsoft is able to supply the Windows Phone SDK) then I have no clue how Android survived this long.
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